Beyond the Cartesian Self

Abstract

I review a number of approaches that attempt to deal with the gap that seems to exist between first-person and third-person accounts of consciousness, and some of the conceptual, epistemological, and methodological issues that surround this distinction. I argue, with reference to Carnap and Schrödinger, that one cannot simply reduce data from the first-person perspective to third-person data, without remainder, especially when the very subject matter of the science includes the first-person perspective.

Keywords

• heterophenomenology
• neurophenomenology
• first-person
• third-person
• science